STACK , ISJI

A.HSEX V A/-

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0 74 f HE CHRISTIAN'S DUTY TOWARDS TRANSGRESSORS.

578

A SERMON,

I'BEACHED IN THE CHAPEL OF

J 4 =1 THE PHILANTHROPIC SOCIETY,

ST. GEORGE'S FIELDS,
ON SUNDAY, MAY 16. 1847,

HL^t Annual CTomnieinoration of ttie ^otiti^'s lEstatlc'slgment.

REV. WILLIAM WHEWELL, D.D.,

MASTER OF TRINITV COLLEGE, AND PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY, IN
THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE.

PRINTED BY PERMISSION FOR DISTRIBUTION AMONG THE
FRIENDS OF THE INSTITUTION.

55

J. Samuel, Printer to the Philanttiropic Society, 19, Lambeth-road.

S E R M 0 K

Ephesians IV. 28.

" Let him that stole steal no more, but rather let him labour,
working with his hands the thing that is good, that he may have
to give to him that needeth."

The promulgation of the Gospel upon earth was
intended to reveal to all men alike, the best and the
worst, the way in which they were to find access to
the Divine mercy, and to attain to the salvation
provided by God for man. Its sphere of action was
the spirit of man, and the world of thought in which
he lives with God. " The kingdom of God is within
you," was the declaration of Christ to his disciples.
The main purpose and the effect of Christ's coming
was not, or at least was not immediately, to reform
the evils which existed in the society of that day ;
— to provide material remedies and alleviations for
the oppression and violence, the crime and corrup-
tion, the poverty and want, which pervaded whole
classes and regions. Christianity aimed, indeed, to
do good unto all men, and chiefly to those who
were of the household of faith ; but the good at
which it aimed was something far higher and deeper
than the relief of material distresses. To recommend

A 2

2107606

a due regard for the laws of property and the re-
straints of decency was very far short of the import
of its message. It had, in the first place, to speak
to those who were struggling to draw near to God :
it had to satisfy the aspirations and yearnings of
those who had been long waiting for his salvation ;
to give light to those that sat in darkness, and who
mourned the darkness and looked for the light ; to
bring near to man the promise of the presence of
God ; to remove the veil which was upon all men's
hearts, and thus convey to them some perception of
the present favour and mercy of their heavenly
Father, that so they might be led to seek to live
with Him eternally hereafter. Christianity dealt
with all ranks and classes, and had for all men in
every class truths of infinite moment, which reached
ta the innermost depths of their hearts and souls ;
but it did not, in the first instance, give much of its
regard to the diflTerences of ranks and classes. Great
and small, rich and poor, master and servant, for
the most part, remained such as, in those respects,
they were. Their earthly differences were all ab-
sorbed and extinguished in the great common cha-
racter into which they were moulded and trans-
formed,— that of sons of God, and joint heirs with
Christ of an everlasting inheritance, Christianity
left the ancient boundaries and partition walls of
the social fabric standing, though it taught men
that we have here no abiding city, but seek one

that is to come. Christianity reformed and rege-
nerated human society, not directly and manifestly,
by the reformation of human institutions, but indi-
rectly and silently, by establishing in the heart of it
another society with deeper roots, — a sacred brother-
hood, which should outgrow and supersede mere
worldly companionships. The disciples were of one
heart and mind ; and this oneness of heart and
mind at once swept away the boundaries of division
of property and distinction of condition. For how
could those care for the treasures of earth who
were soon to have the joys of heaven for their por-
tion ? How could those have their minds full of
their superiority one to another, who were soon to
join the throng which surrounds the throne of the
Eternal ? How could those be in any way estranged
and divided from each other, who were united by
their common share in the propitiation and love of
Christ Jesus their Lord ? The Christians were a
little flock, scattered amid the variegated and hostile
hordes of an unbelieving generation. They were in
the world, but not of the world. They sought not
to reform the faults of human laws, to refashion
the kingdoms of the world, to regenerate society ;
but to be themselves regenerated and adopted as
the subjects of a kingdom which was not of this
world. It is true, that the appointed office of the
Gospel was, in the end, to regenerate the world,
and to give a new spirit to human society upon the

earth. The ancient ties of association among men
had decayed, and were mouldering away ; the old
forms of social life were dead and hollow, and
crumbled fast into ruin. It was the destined task
of Christianity to reknit men together by new and
enduring bonds of love ; to unfold, out of its own
life, living influences which might consecrate and
sanctify the laws and institutions of men ; to make
the kingdoms of the earth tend to become the king-
doms of God and of his Christ. This was to be,
after ages of decay and feebleness and confusion
and transition ; but this was not as yet, in that first
stage of the Christian brotherhood to which the
Apostolic Epistles belong. At that period, the na-
tural subjects of teaching and exhortation in such
communications were the peculiar privileges of the
Christian condition, the hopes and promises which
the disciples of Christ had placed before them, and
the need which there was of their laying hold on
these blessings. Thus, in the beginning of this
Epistle to the Ephesians, from which the text is
taken, St. Paul's great subject is presented when he
speaks to them of " The Beloved, in whom we have
redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of
sins, according to the riches of his grace, wherein
he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and
prudence." And, in like manner, it is put forth in
other parts of this Epistle, and of the other Epistles
which our sacred volume contains : forgiveness and

grace, and the mercy of God towards us, are upper-
most in his thoughts.

But though Christianity had, in the first place
and especially, to do with an inner life and a spi-
ritual society, and had only a casual and collateral
concern with men's social position and temporal in-
terests and ordinary actions, yet is it remarkable
how large a body it contains, of precepts which
inculcate social duties according to their common
acceptation : — how full it is of injunctions to obey
and regard the laws and ordinances which prevail
among men, and the rules by which their rights
and possessions and conditions are determined and
defined. The preachers of the Gospel had a pre-
science that it was their destined office, in the end,
to legislate for the world, or at least to control and
shape its legislation by the view which they had to
give of the Divine government under which man is
placed. The society which their Divine master had
founded, and which they were conducting to its
appointed end, was not to strive with the society
already existing among men, but to win its way by
its gentle and peaceable demeanour. It came not to
destroy the law, even the secular law of ordinary
society, but to confirm it in its general bearings;
and only strongly and gradually to amend its spe-
cial imperfections. And in consistency with this
purpose, the Apostolic Epistles contain advice to the
Christian converts respecting their conduct in refer-

8

ence to the common transactions and relations of
society, not only shaped in a manner full of respect
for the general appointments of the actual laws, but
also guided by a most wise and temperate care to
avoid all collision between external laws and the
Christian's internal convictions. In this spirit are
all the relations of family life treated by the
Apostles, — marriage and parental authority, and
filial obedience ; so that if the Apostles had had it
for their oflBce to found a human society, as ancient
legislators sometimes had, nothing can be conceived
more wise and reasonable and sagacious, as well as
pure and holy, than the instructions which they
have given.

In this spirit also have they given their precepts
concerning the possession and use and distribution
of this world's goods. For while the Gospel en-
joins men to give as freely as they had received,
and while the Apostles received with joy, and dis-
tributed to the necessities of their destitute brethren
the riches which the wealthier disciples laid at
their feet, they still did not dream of abolishing the
distinction of rich and poor, but contented them-
selves with charging them who were rich in this
world to be ready to give and glad to distribute.
They did not encourage the expectation, which
perhaps some had begun to entertain, that the
Christians were so far to have all things in common,
that the poor should live at the expense of the rich :

9

for St. Paul tells the Thessalonians, '* When we
•were with you, this we commanded you, that if any
would not work, neither should he eat." And St.
Paul himself, in order that he might not seem to
countenance any such expectation, " would not eat
any man's bread for nought, but laboured night
and day, that he might not be chargeable to any."
And in like manner he gives to Titus the injunction
(iii. 12), " Let our people learn honest trades, that
they be not unprofitable." For this translation,
which you will find in the margin of your Bibles,
renders the meaning of the original more truly than
the expressions which are placed in the text. And
thus, the majesty of that kingdom of God which
Christ came upon earth to establish, did not disdain
to regard those matters of giving and receiving, of
the labourer and his hire, of industry and idleness
in worldly callings, as things worthy of the thought
and care of its greatest teachers.

But this care and considerateness went further
still. This attention to the general conditions and
prevalent rules of property was not a rule implicitly
followed without regard for consequences; — a temper
acquiescing in the punishment of transgressors as an
inevitable and final catastrophe, which liberated the
Christian teacher from all concern about them. How
readily can we conceive that this might have been
so ; — that those who were convicted of gross viola-
tions of secular laws might have been at once cast

10

off by a community which aimed at more than
mere secular virtue ! How natural would it seem
that, inasmuch as the disciples of Christ were called
upon to purify themselves even as he is pure, any one
who fell short of the standard of purity established
among men for man, should at once be put aside,
as unfit to enter upon the threshold of their path !
Since the Christians were required to aim at a bright
holiness which was to shine forth amid the surround-
ing foulness of the Gentiles, how prudent might it
seem that they should cast out from among them,
and give over to utter reprobation, all who had sunk
into vices which even the Gentiles condemned and
punished ! Since even the heathen acknowledged
the force and value of the law, " Thou shalt not
steal," we might naturally expect that the injunction
of the Christian teacher would be, " Let him that
stole be cast out from among you, lest some be cor-
rupted, and all be brought to scandal." But, as we
see in the text, the course taken by St. Paul is dif-
ferent. He says, " Let him that stole steal no more,
but rather let him labour, working with his own
hands the thing that is good." He does not dis-
guise his disapproval of offences like this ; but he
does not, nevertheless, reject, as a subject for mere
abhorrence and despair, one who has thus offended.
He rather turns his thoughts to that better course of
life which the culprit ought stedfastly to have fol-
lowed, and which it is still in his power to resume.

11

" Let him labour, working with his own hands the
thing which is good." And to show how far he is
from despairing of the moral restoration of him who
had thus erred, he would have placed before him,
not the mere hope of impunity or of gain, of wealth
or pleasure, to arise from the fruits of his labour.
He speaks of him as of a Christian brother ; for
undoubtedly he had belonged to the Christian com-
munity, and had, at one time at least, professed the
hopes and sought the joys of the Christian's life ; —
and so St. Paul once more places before him Chris-
tian motive, and a Christian course of action ; — not
the fear of punishment or the hope of gain, but the
prospect of being able to do good in the same manner
in which his Christian companions were wont to do
— " Let him labour .... that he may have to give
to him that needeth."

The same care for those who may be looked upon
as the outcasts of society we may trace in other
parts of the conduct of our blessed Saviour and his
Apostles. Thus, not to dwell upon our Lord him-
self often choosing publicans and sinners for the
especial objects of his own personal teaching, we
have, in the Epistle of St. Paul to Philemon,
another example of that Apostle's forbearance and
patience towards offenders ; for that Epistle was sent
to Philemon by Onesimus, who had been his bond-
man, and who, having fled from his master, would,
according to usage, have received severe punish-

12

ment on his return. For him too, thus manifestly
brought forward as a transgressor of his legal duty,
St. Paul intercedes, yet not so as denying the claim
of the law, but only as claiming some compliance
from Philemon on the ground of their Christian
friendship, and on account of the hopes which he
had reason to entertain, that the future life of the
offender, now brought to a belief in Christ by St.
Paul, would redeem the past. " Though," he says,
" I might be bold in Christ to enjoin thee that which
is convenient, yet for love's sake I rather beseech
thee — I beseech thee for my son Onesimus, whom
I have begotten in my bonds : which in time past
was to thee unprofitable, but now profitable to thee
and to me," alluding perhaps to the name Onesimus,
which bears the meaning of " profitable." " Him,"
he says, "I have sent again, that thou mayest
receive him. Perhaps he therefore departed for a
season, that thou shouldest receive him for ever ;
not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother
beloved." How affectionate and how hopeful this
mode of speaking of one who came under con-
sideration as an offender! yet still this hope, this
love, did not blind the writer to the claims which
the law had established. " If he hath wronged
thee, or oweth thee ought, put that to mine account ;
I Paul have written it with mine own hand ; / will
repay it." And thus we find the great Apostle of
the Gentiles, he before whom governors trembled

13

and kings were almost persuaded to become
Christians suddenly in the public presence of their
court — who was caught up into the heavens, and
heard unspeakable words which it is not lawful for
man to utter — who could speak of God as having
raised from the dead him and his fellow disciples,
whom he addresses (Eph. ii. 6), " and having made
them sit together in heavenly places in Christ
Jesus," — he did not think it too small or too weari-
some a matter for him to make provision by his
advice and entreaty for the welfare, even in worldly
concerns, of those who had at one period lapsed
into dishonesty, or become fugitives from their
legal burthens. In his view of the Christian
course, such oflSces as these entered as natural and
suitable parts. It did not appear to him to soil his
Christian robes thus to enter into the abodes of
moral evil with its usual concomitances, fear, and
grief, and misery. He wished to speak comfort and
hope to the desolate prisoner of outward crime, as
well as to the struggling bondman of inward sin ;
to win the transgressors of the law, as well as those
who erred by trusting to the law for salvation ; to
restore men to the ties of human brotherhood which
they had forfeited, as well as to bring them within
the bonds of a holier fraternity which Christ had
established and which the Holy Spirit had sanctified.
And it may be well for us, on the occasion which
thus brings us together, to consider how consistent

14

with the Christian scheme and spirit was the course
which the Apostle thus followed ; how agreeable to
the highest aims of Christian teaching it was, not to
disregard those which may at first appear to be
among the lowest; how suitable to the elevation and
purification of the very brightest central knot of the
servants of Christ, is this care for those who thus lie
at the outskirts of the host, stragglers between light
and darkness, bearing the name of Christians, but
showing, alas ! no traces of the renovating and
ennobling power of the Christian spirit. We shall
find reasons, not slight nor few, why the most ad-
vanced disciples of Christ should go into the high-
ways and hedges to gather the wayfarers and
wanderers; should thus make it their business to
labour for the moral reformation and social improve-
ment of those who have violated the boundaries of
established rights, and gone astray from the ap-
pointed seats of duty.

We shall find many reasons why the Christian
should employ himself upon such objects, and some
of these reasons such as must have a strong hold
on the Christians of all times and ages ; — such as
had a prominent place in the mind of the Apostle
when he wrote the words which we have been
considering, and are no less fitted to have weight
with us, after the lapse of so many ages. For all
Christians in all ages, it must be true, that they
cannot work out their own salvation in any manner

15

which removes them from a deep concern and in-
terest in the moral and social welfare of other men,
even of the meanest and most abject, the most
ignorant and vicious. For the Christian, all men
are brethren, the children of one common Father,
however much they may have turned aside from
the paternal countenance ; the heirs of a common
salvation, however much they may have disre-
garded or forfeited their inheritance. In all of
them is the common heart of humanity, by which
we and they are united, in spite of all antipathies
and perversions ; in all of them is the germ of a
blessed immortality, however it may be unfolded
only to be blighted and ruined. To all of them
applies that most touching argument of St. Paul,
" Shall I neglect or despise my brother for whom
Christ died ?" All of them are commended to our
care by Christ himself: — by his example, for he
came to cure the outcasts of society : he cleansed
the lepers, and did not desist, though, of ten that
were cleansed, one only returned to give glory to
God : — bt/ his precepts, for he says, " Bless them that
curse you, do good to them that hate you, that ye
may be the children of your Father which is in
heaven ; for he maketh the sun to shine on the
evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just
and the unjust."

And this love of our fellow-men is the very
evidence and criterion of the Christian condition.

16

" My little children," says St. John, *' let us not
love in word, neither in tongue [only], but in deed
and in truth. Whoso hatli this world's good and
seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his
heart against him, how dwelleth the love of God in
him ?" It is not by mere solitary and internal
struggles with the vast and solemn thoughts which
present to us our heavenly Father and Judge, our
Redeemer and Sanctifier, our Regeneration here and
Eternal Life hereafter, that we can attain to the true
condition of Christian life. These thoughts are
indeed most important and most solemn, but they
have their bearing upon outward acts and practical
dispositions ; upon our intercourse with those who
surround us; upon our labours of love employed
both on those who are near and on those who are
far off. Our condition in reference to God cannot
be independent of our condition in reference to
men. Our souls must be brought near to God by
sharing in affections which he enjoins ; by partici-
pating in his love for all his children ; by seeking
to do good to all; by labouring especially to seek
and to save that which is lost. Our souls must be
prepared for heaven by putting on, even here,
heavenly dispositions and affections. Our struggle
to work out our salvation must include, among
other things, this; — a struggle to expel the coldness,
and hardness, and lethargy, and unlovingness of
our nature; to kindle, instead, a practical warmth

17

of love to all, and, most of all, to those who, being
in their deeds and natures unlovely, have most
need of love. Such a disposition is in itself the
evidence of God's favour, the earnest of our recon-
ciliation with him. Those who are richly imbued
with this spirit have in them already a portion of
the light of heaven ; their presence, their looks and
words, appear to bring a blessing ; they bear about
with them the airs of Paradise, as if, like the
Apostle, they had been carried thither for a season,
and had brought back a celestial light and fra-
grance. Their diffusive charity spreads like sum-
mer sunshine, far as well as near, and gilds and
ennobles all that it falls upon. The meanest objects,
the meanest tastes, only serve to manifest all the
more the sweetness of their affections, the bright-
ness of their hope, the warmth of their zeal ; and
therefore we need not wonder if the great Apostle
of the Gentiles, full of all Christian zeal and love,
patience and courage, hope and trust, had yet his
thoughts open to admit of cares for those that had
stolen, and those that had been unprofitable, and
those that owed to their masters, and could advise
and intercede, and commend and encourage, where
such were concerned, and could look forwards to their
becoming no more servants, but beloved brethren.
And so too we, my brethren, so far as God gives to
us the blessedness of sharing in this spirit, shall
find a nutriment and impulse supplied to our

18

Christian life, by engaging in the like tasks, by
aiming at the like objects, by employing ourselves
in like manner to raise and restore those whom the
unhappy circumstances of their condition have in-
volved in the foulness and misery of vice and igno-
rance,— have arrayed against the order of society,
and estranged from the ordinary means of approach
to God.

But there are other reasons why the Christian
should thus seek for the reformation of those who
are vicious, and the preservation of those who are
tempted, which did not apply to the case of the
Apostle, and which do apply to us. Christians now
no longer form, as they did then, a body distin-
guished from and opposed to the world, and leaving
the world to itself to meet its own responsibilities.
We have no longer a Christian society within the
bosom of ordinary society, bound together by its own
especial ties of love and mutual good offices, but
leaving, without its circuit, a wide margin, given
over to the influences of heathenism, and thrown
upon the hands of the heathen ruler to deal with.
We can no longer say of those who wander in guilt
and misery on the outskirts of our social system —
" They went out from among us, or they refused to
enter in among us — they are not of us." The house-
hold of faith is no longer a little family in a nation
of strangers, following its own laws and caring
only for its own members. Society itself now

19

claims to be Christian Society. We live, as we
are proud of repeating, in a Christian land. Our
rulers are Christians; the general body of those who
carry on the business of life are Christians ; and even
the guilty and the miserable must be looked upon
as guilty and miserable members of a Christian
body, whom we cannot now spurn and exclude in
order that they may not be a reproach to us, but
whose guilt and whose misery is necessarily a re-
proach and a calamity to us to whom they unavoid-
ably belong. Society in its larger capacity has,
through the blessing of God, accepted the truths, cr
at least the profession, of the Gospel, and has thus
become charged with that care for its erring and
offending members which belongs to a Christian
society, and which St. Paul, as we have seen, ac-
knowledged in his teaching and in his own conduct.
We are all members one of another, and if one
member suffer — suffer the evil of corruption, and
transgression, and that depravity which degrades
man below the level of Christian and even of human
life — all the members suffer with it ; all see, in this
suffering, a sad proof how feeble are Christian
influences among them, — how small their zeal and
their power to save their neighbours from the direst
evils as a consequence of the fervid and vehe-
ment turmoil of men struggling for wealth and
honour, and enjoyment, and distinction, and intel-
lectual advancement, and crowding round the

B 2

20

points where such objects are most accumulated,
there must be many who are driven forth into a
dreary, and desolate, and foul, and polluted region,
where want and misery, vice and crime, gather
round them at every step. And these persons,
thus carried to the edge of perdition by the
working of the machinery of our society, it is the
duty of our society — if it is to recognise any duty,
and to own any influence of a Christian spirit —
these it is our duty to seek and to rescue before
they are lost. When we adopted the profession of
Christianity, we knew that the Christian's life was
to be a constant warfare — a warfare with sin, and
blindness, and corruption, to be carried on even to
the end ; — a war with these enemies, first, as they
exist in our own bosoms ; and then, wherever they
prevail, as far as our influence extends. If we do
not do this, how are we possessed of the spirit which
breathed in the words and actions of the early
converts to the Gospel ? They thought all that they
could do was too little to show their love for Christ
who first loved them. They were willing to give
their substance, and their thoughts, and their labours,
to bring into the way of salvation those for whom
Christ died. They so laboured among a benighted
and corrupted heathen population, that, in the course
of a few generations, they won all the fairest
realms in the world to the confession of Christ.
They made those regions Christian ; they

21

Christianized our forefathers, our institutions, our
habits, and thereby ourselves. They gave us
our Christian hopes and support; surrounded us
with Christian influences, which operate, we
trust, with more or less of genuine efficacy, upon
large portions of the community in which we live.
But yet, within the very circuit of the community
so Christianized prevail vices and crimes, and in-
centives and preparatives to crime, which were
never surpassed in foulness and virulence by the
vilest times and scenes of heathen depravity. Law
utters her voice. Punishment waves her scourge in
vain. The scourge of Punishment becomes as it
were a schoolmaster's rod, under which unhappy
creatures are taught to learn more and more com-
pletely the lesson of crime. Not only does no ray
of Christian sunshine beam upon the dark and
cruel habitations in which the children of iniquity
are gathered in squalid heaps, but the very light of
natural reason, so far as it points out the difference
of right and wrong, is quenched ; and the powers
of the human intellect, which the Creator of man
intended to be used to further such ends as ennoble
and purify man's nature, are used merely as instru-
ments of evil, — are carefully sharpened and aug-
mented as part of the armoury of cunning and
fraud and crime. In this our favoured land, which
acknowledges the government of God, and his dis-
pensation of righteousness and mercy through Christ,

B 3

22

there are numbers of unhappy beings, — whole classes
and multitudes, — whose childhood and education,
and aims and habits, whose life and death could
hardly be differently conducted, if from their birth
they had been vowed to the service of some power
of evil, the adversary of society and its institutions,
of religion and its precepts. How shall Christian
men, how shall a Christian community, not inter-
fere to save the unhappy victims of such a state of
things ? We deem that our character as a humane
and Christian country compels us to interpose a
protecting hand in defence of human creatures, who
in foreign lands are doomed to destruction by the
barbarous practices which there prevail. We at-
tempt to save the helpless infant, the devoted widow,
the unsuspecting traveller, about to perish under
the sway of the savage superstitions of India. We
strive with persevering efforts to break the chains
of the slave in every laud. And shall we not also,
when the hateful deed is enacted at our own doors,
save the child from the worse than civil death to
which the contamination of crime is dragging him ;
save the young traveller who is entering on the
journey of life from companions as cruel and de-
structive as the Indian assassin ; save him from a
bondage as dark and dreary as that of the chained
slave? Shall we not seek to snatch from trans-
gression some of those who may be tempted to evil,
and teach them rather to labour, working with

23

their hands the thing that is good, as our Christian
masters have exhorted us that we should do ?

This is what a Christian community must needs
desire more earnestly to have done. This is what
zealous Christians, lovers of God and of man, must
needs desire most earnestly to do. What share the
community in its collective capacity, and what share
individuals, may best take in such a task, we need
not here consider. In truth, we cannot doubt that
the task is large enough for both. When the govern-
ment of the community has done all which it can,
there will still remain work enough in the reforma-
tion and instruction of those most exposed to tempt-
ation, on which individuals may employ the best
energies of their benevolence. When individuals
have done what they can in this work of reformation,
the government may adopt the results of their labour
and experience, without any fear that such a public
administration of corrective and reformatory in-
fluences should displace or disturb the exertions of
private charity in the like field. This matter, as I
have said, we are not here called upon to discuss.
We know that for many years a body of zealous and
benevolent men, at whose invitation we are here
assembled, have given themselves up to this office
of love ; have employed themselves in drawing back
men from the foul regions of vice and crime into the
serener and sweeter air in which we commonly live,
and which sometimes makes us forget that dreary

24

and dismal region in which their task lies. They
have for many years been employed in this task,
and with so much of success as to show that the
blessing of God may be looked for upon such
labours, and that the courses which have been
adopted for that purpose in this and in other coun-
tries are fitted to resist and assuage the evil (for this
is a purpose by which good men in every country
are bound together in heart, and in which, by their
collective experience and mutual counsel, they assist
each other). We are met here to pray for a con-
tinuance of God's blessing upon the means thus
used ; for a portion of his gracious Spirit to be shed
into the hearts of those who are here assembled,
that they may be drawn to aid and share in this
good work ; for a portion of his gracious Spirit also
to be shed into the hearts of those in whose con-
version and elevation the task consists, that they
may readily receive and abundantly respond to the
means of reformation and improvement thus em-
ployed upon them. May our Almighty Father, of
his great goodness, give us hearts and hands ready
for these and all other good works ! Much need is
there that it should be so, both for the sake of the
world and for our own sake. The earth is full of
darkness and cruel habitations — the powers that war
against peace and order, purity and goodness, light
and love, are mighty and active. Their assaults
burst in upon us on every side ; sweep over the

25

boundary of brighter and holier ground wherever a
point is left unguarded. It is only by constant
vigifance, by constant zeal, by constant labour such
as we now urge you to assist in, that the moral
world is saved from the ever-threatening deluge of
sin and ruin. It is saved by God's good Providence ;
but God's Providence works through men and
through means, such as those which we, with your
help and in your company, would employ. Join
us, then, in this warfare against the powers of evil
— this warfare upon which the moral preservation
of our land, under God, depends. Join us for the
sake of your country — for the sake of the great cause
of good against evil — of light against darkness — of
the elevation of man's nature against its degradation.
But join us also for your own sakes. Do you not
know, do you not feel, that you are too commonly,
too constantly under the dominion of worldliness
and selfishness? Do not these powers, for the
most part, stimulate your actions, guide your con-
duct, fill your days, and your weeks, and your
years ? Do you not know, do you not feel, that
it is ill for you that it should be so — that such a
course of action and of thought is not salutary
for you — does not satisfy the needs of your better
part — does not conduce to the health of your
souls ? Do you not feel that you ought, in some
measure at least, and at some time, so to engage
in higher objects, in the promotion of the good

26

of your neighbours for their sake, in helping and
benefiting men because they are your brethren ? Is
it not, in truth, a benefit to you, a great and mighty
gain, when you have the opportunity of thus joining
in a labour of love — of thus exercising the nobler
and sweeter impulses of your nature — of thus taking
a step in that career in which alone men can pro-
ceed far or high, because it takes them out of them-
selves. We say that all men are brethren— let us
act as if it were so ; and that, not for the sake of these
our brethren only, but for our own sakes also, that
we may have many brethren, and learn, by loving
them, to be more deeply conscious of the love of
Him whose children we all are. Let us, for this
day — for this hour — cast aside the world — its
claims, its businesses, its prizes, its cautions. These
things are not worthy of you. You are immortal
beings, and these things are all transient ; you are
spirits, these things are of the earth, earthy ; you
are formed to love and to unite, these things tend
to the estrangement of man from man — to coldness
and hate. The world is sure to have enough of our
hearts — there is no fear of our becoming extrava-
gant and fanatical in our philanthropy. Let us
learn of the world its prudence only, its perseverance
and intelligence in pursuing its objects, for in those
respects the children of this world are too often
wiser than the children of light. But let us recol-
lect that we are called to be the children of light :

000 130 487
27

that we fall lamentably below our vocation if we
continue to be the children of this world : and let
us press forward in the path of light. Let us travel
onwards in the direction in which the light already
beams upon our steps ; and trust in God that as we
advance, darkness and foulness, ignorance and vice,
mutual fear and hate shall be scattered like the
shades of night before the dawning of the day ; and
that we, thus labouring to spread among men the
knowledge and the fear of God, shall have, in the
light of his countenance — in the conviction of his
love — in the firm faith of his Providence — our own
exceeding great reward !

THE END.

J. Samubi,, Printer to the Philanthropic Society, 19, Lambeth-road.

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